Travel Support Thursday

Travel Thursday is back!

Travel Thursday! Remember the jingle!

Travel Thursday! Travel Thursday!

Travel Hack!

Oh boy, remember we would just find random blocks of wood or any other thing that we could find in our apartment and whack it together and...

Travel Thursday!

Travel Thursday!

It's our first one back!

So for those of you who don't know, I'm Lisa.

Yep, I'm Josh.

And we are travel content creators and we did this series of videos called Travel Thursdays every Thursday.

Specifically focused on really exciting and, I don't know, nerdy travel things.

All with the hopes of trying to get people to get out there and travel.

Sometimes watching back some of those videos is hard.

I don't know, tell us in the comments below, was that jingle cringy or not?

Yeah, we were just full-time cringe generators at that point in time.

And I can promise you, this is a guarantee, this is going to be probably less cringy than the last Travel Thursdays.

Probably, that's a promise.

What we do want to do is bring back the travel content that hopefully answers a lot of your questions.

I mean, we get so many questions from a lot of you, which we love and appreciate.

Via email, Instagram, on YouTube comments, just asking us a lot of logistical things that we just don't have the chance to always answer in our videos directly.

That's what Travel Thursday here, back in action, is for every Thursday.

Yeah, so this entire thing is going to live or die by your questions out there.

So please, in the comments of this video, ask whatever questions you want.

We're going to answer three of them every single week from now until the end of time.

Until we can no longer sing Travel Thursday.

Yeah, so if you ask a question and it's the most upvoted question or the most thumbs up question in the comments below, we're definitely going to answer it next week.

Definitely.

Definitely. That's a promise.

Oh boy.

That's a promise.

So if you're new here, what we're all about is travel and making travel accessible to real people.

DIY, budget travel, but also being able to experience the world in a way that recognizes that we don't have unlimited time or money.

That's what's up and you might be watching this thinking, huh, this seems a lot like a podcast.

Look at these microphones they got.

Look at this obviously poorly staged background where they literally taped a map up on a wall using painter's tape.

Look at all that.

It's blue tape and we like it and it adds color.

Yeah, so the video format of this podcast is going to be on YouTube every week-ish from now until the end of time.

And also the audio version of this is going to be available on Spotify and on Apple Music and on wherever else everyone else gets their podcasts on.

Anywhere that you can find podcasts, you'll be able to find this one.

And the hope is that as we're traveling, because we're still planning to go out there and make videos like our three days in Taipei, three days in Hong Kong, in different parts of the world, but we're hoping to keep this travel podcast going every single week so that we can answer a lot of your questions.

So our first question from Anna Lorak89Arem nailed it.

Did you get travel insurance?

If you did, which one did you go with?

This is really top of mind for us right now.

We just signed up for new travel insurance and we do this basically every time we go out on a new trip.

So the company that we go with is called Safety Wing and it's pretty easy to sign up for and to be clear, this is not actually travel insurance.

It's travel medical insurance.

You also have some stuff for like in case your suitcase or your luggage gets lost too.

What I mean by that is that this is not health insurance, this is travel medical insurance, which is a fully different product from what the normal health insurance that you might have in whatever country that you're in.

So what we pay for this is $90 for the two of us to get travel medical insurance and it basically covers you kind of anywhere that you want to go on planet Earth.

Except for the US.

It really has an exception for in the US because our health insurance here is so expensive and really complicated is the right way to say it.

Yes, so it's got this little like checkbox that you have on here, which if you check it, all of a sudden the price is double.

The way that we think about getting travel medical insurance while we're traveling is it's there in case we need it.

So luckily, is this real wood?

I don't know.

Luckily, we haven't really had to use it that much, but there have been times throughout our travels where we thought, oh, thank God that we have insurance because we were able to go see doctors when we got in a motorbike accident.

I used it a bunch on my first trip after I got dengue fever, helped pay for all of my hospital bills that I got from that.

I think travel medical insurance like Safety Wing and there's also World Nomads.

I think either of those are basically required before you go out on a trip in the world.

Generally, your health insurance that you have in the US or wherever you're from is not going to cover you where you're going.

When we got in a scooter accident in Thailand in Chiang Mai a couple of years ago, it was nice to know that we had medical insurance.

Fortunately, nothing went wrong and we were completely fine, but it was nice to know that when we went to go see the doctor just to get evaluated, this was something that would be covered.

The thing to know about travel medical insurance like using Safety Wings or World Nomads, they only cover you for certain things like incidentals or accidents.

They don't cover you for like checkups like if you wanted to go see the doctor for an annual or if you wanted to get dental cleanings while you were brought.

This is not what it's for. It's mostly primarily used just in case you need it in case something happens.

I feel like the healthcare provider in me has to just say this unfortunately also doesn't cover things that if you have a pre-existing condition.

Unfortunately, Nomad Insurance will cover you for some of the things that you need treatment for, on-going treatment for, so if you have cancer.

And also for those of you that are from the US, this is specifically not eligible for you to get coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Correct. It's complicated in the US. Health insurance is complicated here. That's all we're going to say about that subject.

Read the fine print.

So Safety Wing, great. Super easy to sign up. You just go onto the website and five minutes later after putting in your information, bam, it'll show up.

World Nomads also great, has gotten a little bit more expensive over time.

And kind of separately, not related to insurance, we've been talking more about healthcare as it relates to traveling in general.

I think one of the surprising things that we've learned or that I've learned in the last couple of years is how affordable and actually really great healthcare is abroad.

When we were in Thailand, we had been gone away from home for a year and we hadn't gotten any dental checkups.

And we thought, you know, we're in Chiang Mai. It's a big city. There's a university. There's dental schools, medical schools nearby.

Why don't we go get our teeth looked at?

And I think you and I both got cleanings and checkups all for $70 each, I think.

I don't think we're trying to say you should get healthcare outside of the typical places that you do because there are plenty of countries that have great providers.

The U.S. have really great practitioners and providers.

My only point was I've just been pleasantly surprised with the availability and the option for healthcare outside of the U.S.

And this is not just like getting dental care, even just pharmacy and neurologist when you take your head, but we have visited countless pharmacies across the globe.

Like when we got sick in Portugal or when we got sick in Morocco, all these different places.

And I think it's the thing that I feel is grateful and lucky and impressed by how many options are available to us for tourists when we don't speak the language or know what we're doing.

It's just been an eye-opener. Speaking of not knowing the local language.

We are going to cover the next question that we have gotten a lot more frequently recently.

And I think it's something that we definitely take for granted, but it's generally about what do you do when you don't know the local language wherever you travel?

So we got a question from Modia.

I don't know if it's mentioned, sorry if I missed it, but do you speak any Japanese if not how you pick places to eat?

Or in our Taipei videos someone, Patricia2932 asks how hard is it to order if you don't know any Chinese?

Yes, so this is something that I thought about a lot, especially before I left on my first trip all the way back in like 2011 or 2012.

As I expected that I would get to Japan and I thought one, absolutely nobody was going to speak English at all. Obviously totally untrue.

I also felt like I didn't really have any other way to communicate or at least maybe I hadn't like honed that skill well enough that without verbal language I felt like there was no way to communicate with another human being.

When in reality there's all of this nonverbal charadesy sort of communication that you can do, but I think the biggest hurdle for this for like, do you need to know the language or do you need to, you know, how much of the language you need to learn before you go?

I think the biggest hurdle is that you're just kind of afraid of looking stupid in a foreign country, which is totally real and I totally get that.

But in reality, you already are, just by showing up and it's totally fine, it's totally fine.

Like the whole system is set up for you to succeed and for you to be able to order food because all of these companies everywhere that you go in all these restaurants, they want your money, right?

Like they want you to have a good meal there, they want you to have a good time, they want you to feel welcomed in their country, at least most places do.

So the way that I think about this is that as I'm traveling, it's just my job as the tourist, as like the guest there, to absorb all of the awkwardness of any interaction that I have.

So if I need to make a big show of it and do some sort of weird hand motions to tell people that I want a slice of pizza, one slice of pizza, like if I have to do that, that's on me to have to do it.

And it's not on them to try to make that interaction work.

It's on me to do whatever it takes to be able to order that slice of pizza.

I have this very vivid memory.

I think we were at a stop before we were waiting for our train and there happened to be like a market right outside the train station.

So we went to go get some food and there were these incredibly delicious looking fried rolls and I think you just wanted to know what was in them.

And there was no sign, there was nothing, no menu, it was just a street food market.

And we were like, well, what do we do?

And I just remember you pulled out your phone and was like, what is he going to do?

Is he going to try to use Google Translate?

Which by the way is very, very helpful.

But you ended up pulling up pictures of different animals and vegetables to try to explain.

Like he showed her a picture of a pig.

And a cabbage.

He showed her a picture of a chicken.

And he was like, oh, and she laughed so hard.

And she said, she like scrolled and she was like, the vegetable.

The vegetable.

I was like, cool.

It was incredible.

But it's true.

I think sometimes we're so afraid to just even embarrass ourselves slightly.

And also sometimes worried about, worried about inconveniencing the other person that we don't even try.

Like, I know we have definitely been places where we're like, ah, there's no menu.

I don't even want to bother.

I don't even want to walk in.

But I don't know, that has been one of the also surprising things that I've learned as we've traveled is how incredibly kind every single person that we've met has been.

And even if we don't share the same language, there's just like a universal desire for everyone to be happy and have the other person be happy.

We walk into a shop and we have Korean barbecue and we have no idea how to order.

So we like use Google translate to translate the sign that we use our pointing sign.

At the end of the day, we're like, I really liked that Korean salt.

Remember that?

We love your parents.

We really, really wanted that salt and we have no idea what it was, where we could buy it, how do you identify it?

And then Google translate and I was like, oh, are we going to offend him?

Is he going to like, he's not going to understand?

Does he think we're trying to steal it?

Yeah, yeah.

And in the end, he gave us a whole bottle container of Korean salt to take home with us.

And I was just so touched.

It's in your mom's house to this day.

Yeah, yeah.

So I think, first of all, to answer the question, do we speak other languages?

Kind of Lisa speaks Chinese very, very well.

I speak German, not all that good.

And I know how to say like 10 words in like 40 different languages, but it's the same 10 words every single time.

Hello.

Yes.

No.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Bathroom.

This is the word that I use all the time in a lot of different languages.

But outside of that, no.

I mean, not really.

And we certainly don't prepare to go to any countries by spending a lot of time learning it, which

We used to.

Yeah.

Well, I would.

We've gotten lazier.

I would say yeah.

We've gotten lazier because the truth is everyone's so accommodating.

It's kind of, yes, it's not good for a laziness.

I don't feel like it's required, but I feel like we'd have a better experience everywhere that we went if we did know the language.

We tried a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do think I felt a little bit like my dad, you know, growing up, he used to listen to those audio tapes.

You just put it in the car and then there are audio tapes in cars.

Yeah.

And he would listen to audio tapes of just his audio tapes repetitive.

Anyway, he would listen to tapes on audio.

He'd listen to tapes on audio, just how to speak certain languages.

But just enough so that one would go to like a Thai restaurant.

He would be able to say hello or sweaty pop.

Or when we would go to a Mexican restaurant, he would be able to order in Spanish or communicate with the waiter or waitress,

even though they completely spoke English.

At the time I was mega embarrassed.

Because he's like ordering in California.

So it's like, hola, senor, como estas?

And I hope that others appreciate that we're just taking the time to learn just the basics.

I do think our experience would be a lot richer if we were even relatively proficient in speaking the language.

I think our experience traveling would be almost totally different if we did in a really good way.

And I think that that's one of both of our goals is over the next handful of months to years to get more proficient

in the languages for the places that we go to frequently.

Some man are in just enough to be able to like order stuff off a menu and say thank you to people.

But...

You know, just the important stuff.

Just cuz.

It's so fun to say.

So fun to say.

But I do agree.

I do agree with that sentiment.

Even if it's not for the purpose of trying to understand everything that's happening around us

or read everything that's happening or read every sign that's around us.

I think even just a little bit of try that we can give with others that we interact with when we're traveling.

I don't know.

It bonds you almost.

For sure.

For sure.

Let's say that you're working at Starbucks in the U.S.

And somebody comes up to you and even if they speak whatever they're asking for incorrectly,

like let's say they come up to you and they say coffee, one, pluh.

If that's all they said to you, you'd probably get the idea that they like want one coffee

and that they're very nice people.

Pluh.

Pluh.

Like please.

Yeah, so even if you only got like three total words out, you'd appreciate that a lot more

than if they just came up to you and could you say that same thing in Mandarin of just like one coffee, please?

I could.

Okay, so say that.

Oh, ebay cafe.

So if they just say that and if they just kept saying ebay cafe, ebay cafe, if they just kept saying that over and over,

you'd probably still get it, but you'd probably appreciate it more if they only said just the handful of words that they had to you.

You know, it's just, it's like tennis, you're just trying to get the ball over the net, you know,

and then that over the net use whatever you have available to you if it happens to be like literally picking up a thing and pointing at it

because you don't know a single word in the language or just making hand gestures or just saying the one thing that you do know.

It doesn't matter, you're trying, you're trying, but it's on you to make the effort.

Because I do always appreciate anytime that we, I mean, I'm always impressed and super, super grateful wherever we're going.

When people find out that we live here or, you know, from America, they will speak English to us.

They will try just the smallest amount and that to me makes me feel really warm and welcome.

So I think, yeah, there is some kind of responsibility on us when we're visiting to also do the same.

Yeah, to just try. That's all you got to do is just try.

But the logistically, I mean, I guess the like, to sum it up, because I think there are some like logistical things that we actually do when we don't speak the language

and I think Google Translate helps loads when you're traveling.

It has the ability to not only you can type in English and translate it to whatever language,

you can take pictures of signs and have it translate it for you into the language that you need.

It's incredible. We've used it a ton of times too when we can't communicate with the person in front of us,

but we'll type it out in English, translate in their language and they'll do the same back before.

Yeah, so let's just walk through like a theoretical, let's say we're in Japan, the entirety of the menus in Japanese,

we haven't heard a single English word the entire time we're there, like how would we order food there.

So we'd walk up and they probably have a menu like posted out front or if they didn't, then we would just walk in and I'd go like this.

Please? I would just do that and then hopefully that would get us a menu.

And this menu is totally in Japanese. So then we'd pull out Google Translate on our phone and we'd point it at the menu

and it would give us an approximation of what's on the menu. It's not perfect. It'll just say like, beef, ox, tail.

And it'll oftentimes give you totally wrong things, but you'll have to like parse through what it actually means.

It'll give you like ramen bowtie cat and you'll be like, I don't know what that could mean, but it's just Google Translate.

Yeah, it's just Google Translate's imperfect, right? And sometimes it's handwriting, so it's just getting the handwriting wrong.

Make a decision off of that and then just literally hold the menu, say nothing because they presumably don't understand what we would say anyway,

and then just point at it. Just point at that one. It's just about like being unhurried, being unfrustrated,

and just trying to solve the problem of that. You guys don't really understand each other.

It's not that you have difficulties with each other. It's just you literally don't know how to communicate

and just solving it with whatever tools you have available to you.

And not being embarrassed to do a little trade.

Yeah, exactly. So let's say that they didn't understand. They ask you a question like, hey, do you want drinks?

But they ask you in Japanese and you're just like, I have no idea what they said. I don't know.

And then they might point at the menu and be like, this, and then you'd run Google Translate on that thing right in front of them

as you're just like, you're just absorbing all the awkwardness. That's your job. You're just absorbing it all.

You run it over and then you see, oh, that's like, oh, okay, soda or beer or wine or whatever.

Oh, and then you're like, oh, okay, cool. And then we just point at the thing and then magically beer would appear later.

And so that's how we'd solve this problem. And we've used the same thing tons of times.

We use this basically everywhere we go.

If you go back and watch our videos every time that we order, maybe this will be a fun task for the video editing portion

is finding all the amounts of the number of times we embarrassingly laugh or have nervous laughter after we order.

It's so cringy, but it doesn't matter. It's just it.

You get there.

Yeah, you get there. You get there. And I don't, I don't know.

Maybe I've just gotten numb to it over time, but I kind of find the challenge fun at this point.

I find it enjoyable to solve this communication problem in as many ways as I possibly can.

And especially just to take in all the awkwardness of the situation into myself and understand that it's my job to solve the problem.

It's not their job. I'm in their country.

You're right. I do think embarrassment.

We should learn to take embarrassing moments and just let them be a lesson.

I don't know. Just let them go.

I hold onto these things and remember them forever.

Like if I accidentally say, I mean, 10 years ago, I can remember embarrassing moments, but it sounds like you know, you just got to just got to let that go.

Speaking of embarrassing stories.

Oh, what do you got?

Oh, yesterday.

Oh, this is fresh.

This is new.

Okay.

So yesterday I was doing grocery shopping.

I was at Sam's Club and I picked up, you know, all our groceries, rotisserie chicken, holler $5 rotisserie chicken from Sam's Club.

Yes.

I walked around and I was like in the produce section, grabbing different things, left my car in a place and just like, you know, was grabbing things and putting them in.

And then I start walking away and like five minutes later, I think it was five minutes later, someone ran after me and they were chasing me.

They were like, excuse me, excuse me.

And I looked back and I'm like, hi.

And they said, I don't think that's your car.

And I looked down and it's just, there is a rotisserie chicken, but there's rotisserie chicken produce and then just tons of underwear.

And I was like, oh no, I stole their underwear.

He stole someone's underwear.

I stole their underwear.

I was so embarrassed and I apologize for the use of it.

Oh my God.

And then of course I had to run and get my car and then I saw them multiple times throughout.

Because when you're at Sam's Club, you live there for like an hour, right?

Yeah.

Anyway.

Okay.

That was great.

Okay.

Next question.

Question number three.

What MacBook Pro are you using for editing?

Not that one right here.

Where, where is it?

Oh, could you go grab it?

Please?

I believe in you.

There it is.

Behold.

Is it charged?

Behold.

I'm really excited about this.

This is a tech question.

This is a tech question.

I don't get tech questions a lot.

I used to be an IT guy for a very long time in my life.

And in a lot of ways I still kind of am.

Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

Okay, so what we have is we have the 14 inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Ultra in it.

And it's got 32 gigs of RAM, a ton, two terabyte hard drive.

And this thing's an absolute beast.

And we needed it because we made this switch about like six months ago from making 2015

to 20 minute videos to like hour plus videos.

And all of those videos are also in 4K, some of them in 30 frames per second.

Some of them in 60.

So we needed something a little beefier.

We needed something a little bigger to be able to edit all these monster videos because

we use Final Cut Pro to edit.

And just like any other video editing software, whenever you get into long videos at really

high bit rates in 4K resolution, computers tend to get really sad.

And our last laptop got sad very frequently.

The biggest improvement that we found on this one was actually rendering time.

So when we rendered our last videos, if we had like an hour long 4K video, that took

like three and a half hours to render from start to finish.

And then if we had to make a change to it, or we forgot something or whatever, we're

like, oh my God, now we can't even like release this video this week.

We need to re-render the whole thing after we make the changes.

So instead of three and a half hours, this thing takes like 15 minutes.

Yeah, for any of you Final Cut Pro users out there, you know that all too well.

You know that all too well.

So this is Lisa's main laptop.

Love the battery life on this thing.

Don't necessarily love the price of it, but we love what it does and how like just rock

solid it is.

It's great.

I thought you were going to call me out on my battery hygiene.

Yes, Lisa has terrible battery hygiene, which is why it was charging in the other room is

you didn't charge it before we started this thing.

So what I have is I have the M2 MacBook Air, the kind of bigger 15 inch one.

And for general use and also for editing in 4K, this thing is awesome, especially for

the price.

I think this is the best travel laptop that you can get at this price point by far.

And this 14 inch MacBook Pro thinger, I think is only really necessary if you're doing like

really long 4K video editing.

If you're just doing like normal YouTube stuff and you're filming in 4K, but your videos

are only like 15, 20 minutes long and don't have a ton of motion graphics or a ton of

other things, you could totally get by with the MacBook Air.

Totally.

Yay.

I got to talk about tech today.

Please ask more tech questions.

I just want to talk about it more.

Just hit us with all of it.

You know, I can talk about this for years, for decades.

Okay.

Speaking of tech, this won't be so technical, but we read this article the other day, which

was super fascinating to me.

It's a sleek article.

And the title is Remember What It Was Like to Travel Free Smartphone.

And it's super interesting.

It's written by someone who is a Gen Z-er who has had a cell phone for almost their entire

life and they asked their mom, hey, what was it like to travel free smartphone?

And I thought, that's such an interesting question and such a cool article.

And it delves into, you know, all the different apps that they use when they travel Airbnb,

Expedia, Booking.com, Google Maps.

I mean, all the things that we talk about, Google Translate.

And then talking with their mom about it, she was saying that her mom heavily relied on

guidebooks, like physical guidebooks, talking to people in real life, scrapbooks, tickets,

physical tickets, no QR codes.

Like just the whole article is super fascinating for us because I think we're definitely on

the cusp of like, we love tech and we love the convenience of cell phones and the things

that ask for it for our travels.

And also, I mean, hello, we're video recording every ounce of it.

But then...

We've experienced both.

We missed both.

Yeah, we've experienced both.

Like on my first trip around the world that I went on after I quit my job in like 2011,

all I brought with me was an iPod touch.

So I could only connect by Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi was barely anywhere that you went at that point

in time.

So I was disconnected most of the time.

So I, this is not fully like pre-technology, I guess is my experience here, but it's definitely

like pre-smartphone for me.

And I remember this time so nostalgically and so much more presently, I guess is the best

way to describe it.

So back in 2011, just had this little iPod touch with me.

So like 95% of the time, I was not using any technological device at all as I was traveling

the world.

And I went to like 30-something countries over a year.

And the entirety of the time was just figuring things out with whatever I had right in front

of me.

And that meant like, I would literally read a lonely planet before I would show up in

a country.

Or I would do a little bit of Googling or I would try to save Google Maps onto this thing,

but most of the time I was just kind of wandering around aimlessly trying to find these hostels

and hotels I was staying at based on an email that they had sent me three weeks before when

I booked it.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's definitely something like, it's a give and take, right?

There's so many things on the one hand we understand and we are building this channel

and trying to like maximize travel and maximize the time and the budget that we have until

a lot of that relies on technology and being efficient and knowing where you're going at

any given time and saving money in the process.

But then like, I don't know, we're going to go to New Zealand soon.

And the last time we were there was in 2019 and we specifically decided to not get SIM

card.

We only connected to Wi-Fi when we could, which was rare because we were doing a car camping

trip and we had a lonely planet book.

It was like this thick and we would just flip through the pages, take notes and take turns

planning the day based on this lonely planet book.

Like I miss that, I miss that a lot.

The memories that I have are so much more vivid from that trip than hundreds of the trips

that we've been fortunate enough to take in the last couple of years.

But I think part of it was how we interacted with our phones or not.

I think my opinion on this is that travel was better before smartphones in a lot of

ways.

I was way more connected to the places that I was in and I felt like I was less distracted

as a person and I also felt like I was thinking less about what else was going on in the world

and I was just trying to figure out how to travel.

It was way less convenient.

It was incredibly less convenient.

I spent so much time lost in the streets of any place that I was in just trying to find

a hotel or trying to figure out how to get to this museum I was trying to go to this

restaurant.

But I also felt like I was discovering a lot more because I didn't have this big preconceived

plan of all these things that I had to do in the order that I had to do them in.

And now it almost feels like we have to be connected at all times or we have to make

an active effort to put away our phones.

Like I remember there was a period in time pre-YouTube too where we had to say,

okay, our only allowed time to use our phones was 30 minutes before bed and that is it.

And at the time I remember thinking, no, there's so much pressure.

I want to plan and I want to see all these things.

What have we missed out?

Right, the FOMO, yeah.

So real, the constant phone.

I'll just give you an example real quick of when I left for my first trip around the

world of what traveling without a smartphone is like.

First of all, booking this flight to New Zealand, the only option to book it at the time

was by making a phone call.

So to even book the flight, I had to call up American Airlines and say,

I would like to spend some of my award miles for a flight to New Zealand.

And then they would literally repeat back to me, okay, on September 4th, there's a flight

at 2am and then on the next day there's a flight at 5pm and we would just go through

all these options individually until I would describe to them the flight that I would want.

And then they would say like, okay, so you could sit kind of in the back of the plane

or you could sit in the middle or we could get you an aisle seat.

But if you do that, and all of this was a conversation on the phone,

it wasn't just like clicking a thing on a map.

And didn't you say like by the end of that conversation, she was like super,

like you guys had bonded over the fact that she booked this entire trip for you?

Yes.

She was super stoked for your trip.

Yeah, yeah, she was super, she was super, because we had been on the phone.

This was actually part of a longer thing.

We booked an entire year's worth of flights because that's what I had at the time as I

spent the 160,000 American Airlines miles to book an entire trip around the world.

So we booked all of these flights.

It was like 20 plus flights or something on the phone with this person.

We were on the phone for like five hours.

But even if it was just booking that one first flight to New Zealand,

it still would have taken like 30 minutes.

So all of this is a manual process.

All of this is done just like that.

So then once you actually make it to the airport, easy,

you just like hand them your passport just like you do now and then you get on the plane

and then you land.

And then once you land, you really don't have a good idea.

I would have like taken some screenshots of some maps on my little iPod touch.

You took screenshots on there?

Yeah, so that's what I would have done.

And I also would have printed out a literal map.

I would have printed out like directions and I would have printed out like backup

directions in case the bus that I wanted to get on to get into town I would have

missed or whatever because there's no way I'm going to pay for a taxi because I'm,

you know, a budget traveler on a trip.

So I would have done that and then made my way into town.

And then once I got into town, it would have just been kind of looking around

randomly trying to find where my hostel was.

And then I would just follow other people who had the gigantic backpacks on

and most of the time that would get me to where the hostel district was.

And then in there I'd ask someone and someone would help me find my place.

And then, and I think this is the biggest change is that once you're in the hostel,

everyone is talking to each other because there wasn't another option.

It's not like, I mean, I mean Skype existed.

FaceTime did not exist yet.

WhatsApp, I don't even know if it existed back then, but if it did,

it definitely didn't have video calling.

I think most of the video calling was by Skype at this point and the internet speeds

were so comically slow that you couldn't really do it anyway.

Whereas nowadays when you go to a hostel or really any hotel, everyone's just doing this.

Or restaurant.

They're just like on their phone.

We're guilty of this too.

And so when you're there, you're just way less connected with the other people

that are in the hostel with you or in the hotel with you.

And it feels like the chances of actually meeting other people and going to travel with them

is slim to none.

People are just interested in hanging out with their clique.

Insular.

The people that they brought with or FaceTiming people back at home

whenever they have downtime instead of just trying to start up a conversation

because it's, I don't know, it's easier, I guess, to not try to meet new people.

I don't know.

What do you think?

Yeah, I mean, I think I, the first time I remember feeling, I guess,

I hadn't traveled as much when I was younger,

my first big solo trip was to Japan.

And I had just made the switch to an iPhone.

I mean, I was like a, I was a late adapter on purpose because I saw all my friends getting

iPhones and smartphones and we'd watch movies together and they were just on their phones

and I never understood it because I still had a flip phone.

I still miss it.

But eventually I caved and got an iPhone because I loved taking photos

and that was my biggest, my biggest motivator for getting an iPhone,

was being able to take photos on my phone and have it not look pixelated.

Yeah.

But I did bring my phone with me to Japan, but I didn't get a SIM card.

I didn't, yeah, and I didn't, I don't know, I remember landing really late at night

at the airport in Tokyo and being really stressed out about the fact that I was there by myself

and I didn't have any way to contact anyone.

And I was going to take a bus to where I was going to stay.

And I just, I don't know, it was just, all of it felt new for so many different reasons

because I'd never been to Japan before.

I was solo traveling and I didn't have my phone as a guidance.

Right.

So I remember pre-trip.

I was the kind of person that like planned a itinerary to the tee,

especially because I was going by myself.

I wanted to maximize my time and I wanted to make sure that I wasn't getting lost by myself.

I mean, all of it would have been fine because Japan is such a safe place anyway.

So I remember, I mean, on the one hand, not having my phone was like kind of scary

because I thought, oh, this is going to be a challenge.

And it creates a lot of waves because I printed so many pieces of paper.

Right.

But then I think about how liberating it was to not have my phone.

Like I'm a very introverted person in general.

So meeting new people was a challenge, but not having my phone actually forced me

or helped me get over myself and meet people.

Even if, you know, it was just for short conversations at a time.

My dad never, never had a smartphone.

He just never went there.

He never even had a cell phone actually.

He just was like, nope, tapping out of that.

So like when we all got phones, I think it was very confusing to him where we'd sit

at the dinner table and be on the phone together or not together

while we're all sitting around the table.

So I think I'm very cognizant of that.

Like I, I don't love what phones have done not only to social media travel

and all of our experiences, but I recognize that we rely on them for a while.

Yeah, for sure.

For sure.

It's way more convenient like, man, way more convenient now.

Yes.

Without a doubt.

You can book a hotel after you arrive 10 minutes before you get there.

And it's no problem.

You don't have to call someone.

And you can shop around for the best prices.

Yeah.

You almost never have to talk to another human unless you really want to.

Right.

Which is enabling in some of the worst way possible.

Yeah.

It was common to have conversations with people.

Yeah.

And exchange keys for Airbnb.

Yeah.

You'd come in and they'd talk to you for half an hour.

They'd ask you like, where do you want to go?

Or like, and now it seems like the big whole point of Airbnb is like,

please just like leave me a lock box and never let me talk.

And I just, I feel like we've lost a lot.

I feel like we've gained a lot.

I don't know.

I just, maybe it's just nostalgia, but I feel like I miss pre-smartphone travel a lot.

And I think more importantly, I miss the person that I was and the amount of patients

and like the amount of willingness to solve problems no matter how long it took

and how just clear minded and unhurried I felt in pre-smartphone travel.

Because the only thing I was doing, of course I was going to be inefficient at this.

Like of course I was going to be bad at this.

I'm in a foreign country trying to figure out all these problems out.

The lack of available tools made it so that the only way that I could solve problems

was by connecting with new people and asking for help.

And I think in a lot of ways that that made my trip a lot better.

Yeah, and I think it's a hard thing to balance too because we make these YouTube videos, right?

With the idea of hoping to get other people to travel and see the world and experience it for themselves.

But we also want to encourage other people to travel in a way that feels less connected to this

and more connected to the place that they're in.

I think the best way that I can describe this is that travel before smartphones is like

imagine every app that you have on your phone.

You know, every booking.com, every translate app, every WhatsApp, everything like that.

All of those were people, physical, human people that you would go up and talk to

and ask them like, hey, can you help me find a hotel or hey, can you help me book this tour that I want to go on

or hey, can you help me find this restaurant and which one do you recommend

or hey, can you help me book this flight and all of those things, those were people.

And that was kind of a beautiful thing.

It was also much less convenient and much slower.

So there was a given to take, but I think for me, I miss that connection.

I miss those forced connections that you had to have to get things done as you were traveling.

Do you think there is a world where travel like pre-smartphone era could still exist?

I want to do that.

Like for our New Zealand trip, my intention is to use smartphones as little as possible, whoever they are.

And maybe, I mean, maybe just buy a guidebook like we did last time we were there

or maybe just ask people like, where should we go next?

You know, like I want more of that experience just because I feel like it was a lot richer experience.

It might just be nostalgia, maybe we'll get halfway through that New Zealand trip

and be like, just give me Google Maps again, just give me all these tools, you know, maybe.

It does take a lot of practice.

I don't think the answer is like nothing.

I don't think the answer is like become a Luddite and throw all of this technology away, right?

Like in travel, but I think the answer is somewhere in between like no connection and like hyper connected.

And I think you and I, when we travel right now, we're like hyper connected.

And I think we would have more fun if we were somewhere closer to the other side of that scale.

Yeah, tell us what you think.

So curious about your ways and your tips and tricks of traveling with phones or not.

And I don't know how connected you'd like to be when you're traveling.

We get their utility and we get that it makes it super convenient and accessible

and it allows us to share with each other, with our families, with a friend.

Yeah, would love to know your thoughts.

And neither of us really traveled a lot pre-internet.

We traveled pre-smartphone for sure, but neither of us really traveled pre-internet.

So if you're out there laughing at us for all of the tools that we already had,

even though they weren't smartphones, like even though we couldn't bring all of it with us,

I would love to hear that perspective, like tell us your stories about like what travel was like before any of this internet stuff even existed.

I would love to hear that as much as you.

Oh man, that'd be so interesting.

Right, talking now to our families, like our parents about traveling, what it was like back then.

Like even just sometimes talking with my mom, she immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan by herself in her 20s, didn't speak any English.

She managed to do all of that without any internet.

Such bravery.

And I just think like...

So brave, like could you imagine doing that now?

And she talks about how now traveling is so hard for her and challenging because there's all these trains to navigate.

There's all these websites to book, you know, all the different hotels and all these points and miles.

How do we use them?

And I think technology is her like, isn't the weakest point for her.

For sure.

But then I think of like her ability to just get on a plane and move here.

It's just incredible and so different.

But I feel like there has to be a middle ground.

There has to be a way where we can exist in the current world that we are in with technology and phones and travel and YouTube and social media

and still get a little bit of that spontaneity and presence that we're craving.

Either way, obviously we went way too deep on this one.

We are fully, fully in the deep end at this point.

Thanks for sticking around if you have.

Yeah, let us know your thoughts.

We really appreciate you tuning in for this first episode.

Well, travel Thursday number one first episode of version two.

This is the first ever travel Thursday.

Please don't look back at any of the other ones.

This is the first time we've ever done this first time with this is okay.

See you then.

That's a promise.